Robert McKee quotes from Adaptation. (2002)

Charlie Kaufman

I'm pathetic, I'm a loser. I have failed, I am panicked. I've sold out, I am worthless, I... What the **** am I doing here? What the **** am I doing here? ****. It is my weakness, my ultimate lack of conviction that brings me here. Easy answers used to shortcut yourself to success. And here I am because my jump into the abysmal well - isn't that just a risk one takes when attempting something new? I should leave here right now. I'll start over. I need to face this project head on and...

Robert McKee

...and God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That's flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character.

Robert McKee

Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your **** mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every **** day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every **** day, someone, somewhere makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life. And why the **** are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it. I don't have any bloody use for it.

Charlie Kaufman

Ok, thank you.

Charlie Kaufman

Mr. McKee! I'm the guy you yelled at today.

Robert McKee

I need more.

Charlie Kaufman

...But a little fantastic and fleeting and out of reach.

Robert McKee

Then what happens?

Charlie Kaufman

That's the end of the book. I wanted to present it simply without big character arcs or sensationalizing the story. I wanted to show flowers as God's miracles. I wanted to show that Orlean never saw the blooming ghost orchid. It was about disappointment.